Origin Story
Music Columnist Erin Pattie and a couple of her friends reflect on music as a means of discovering who you are.
Every single person I’ve met has a musical origin story. At first, it seems crazy to try and trace your music taste back to a couple, or even one, albums. There are so many albums that, without fail, evoke just the right gut punch of emotion. Albums like those are sweeping and expansive, big songs that remind you of big emotions. There are also so many albums that are nostalgic in a different way, sneaking into people’s lives and setting up shop in the corner of their brain, like how my friends and I don’t remember memorizing all the words to the Blackout album by Britney Spears, it just happened. With music streaming, and the ability to have every song in the world at your disposal, it’s a borderline overwhelming task. But no matter how big people’s playlists get, most people have the music that’s really engrained itself into their core. I have always referred to this as your “musical origin story.” It’s the songs/albums that first really got you, that shaped your tastes from then to now. If you really think about it, your musical origin story will make a lot of sense. I enlisted the help of two fellow music fanatics and college radio kids, Joe and Nicole, to help me discuss the albums that shaped us and how music as a whole has become a part of our core.
Joe is my friend and former boss at our school’s radio station, ever a fan of ambient music and Sylvan Esso. When I asked him about his origin story, he couldn’t choose just one album. His first, somewhat surprising pick was Daft Punk’s Human After All. “It was the first album that I found that was just so different from anything else that I’d heard. Daft Punk was the first artist that I discovered for myself when I was either 8 or 9. It just opened my idea of music and showed me that I could unearth my own discoveries.” His next pick was Radiohead’s Kid A. “Back in 2011 YouTube recommendations led me from Skrillex to “Everything In It’s Right Place.” Again, it was like nothing else that I’d heard. Just weird and strange and truly enthralling. I vividly remember the moment that I discovered it.” But of course, I am of the mind that everyone can, and will, discover an album that hits you like nothing else. Joe’s ultimate pick is Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism. “That record is just incredible and primed my music taste for so much. I fell in love with the band and ended up seeing them twice in 2011. It kind of felt like I was discovering what I truly liked and valued. But also I was 13 so it was just cool to go to shows and have something that only I was into.”
Nicole, my stellar co-host, says the album that changed music and life for her was Bon Iver’s Bon Iver. “It was the first time I really felt like an artist was mine, if that makes sense. I felt so connected to Bon Iver because their music was exactly what I needed at that time in my life. I was dealing with some really intense shit and that album made me feel like I was allowed to smile, cry, sing along, sleep, or do whatever I needed to alongside it to help me heal. On a less extreme note, it was one of the first albums that really shaped my taste and made me realize how much I love some good sad boy indie. Basically, that album made me realize how impactful music can be and how much I needed it as a part of my life. And also how much I love Bon Iver which obviously still stands true.”
My personal origin album is Tegan and Sara’s The Con. I heard The Con for the first time right at the start of my freshman year of high school. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I don’t know if half of the things they sing about on this album actually happened or if they’re metaphorical, and to be honest, I don’t care. I credit The Con with helping me find my voice, the depth of emotion on the album helped give me a lot of the emotional language and perspective that I still value, even seven years later. I still find new notes, harmonies, or pauses that make me fall in love with it all over again. From lush and complex songs like “Floorplan,” to sweetly sad acoustic songs like “Call It Off,” to big emotional numbers like “Nineteen,” The Con never fails to make me feel, think, and reflect on all the versions of me that have loved, and still love, this album.
I also asked Joe and Nicole about the impact that music has had on finding who they are, and they gave two different kinds of answers. Joe looked at it in the big picture, “I think that music pushes us to explore what we’re feeling a little deeper and to hear other voices on a deeper level. Reading poetry is incredible, but with music you’re hearing poetry as it was meant to be heard by the author. You hear their tone, their mood, what really inspired them. You get to be wrapped up in their thoughts to this deep level. You’re enveloped in their mind and it helps you to understand yours. Especially when you’re young and developing, working out what it means to feel love or loss or just happiness. At the end of the day, we find out who we are through experiences and stories. But music, and musicians, helps us to contextualize those experiences, to give them more, or less, meaning. Most importantly, it makes us feel less alone in constantly working out who we are and less alone in our feelings.”
Nicole looked at the question from a more personal view. “Music is the thing that makes me feel most alive. Without it, my days would be so quiet and bland and boring. Music reminds us that it’s ok to feel all of the things I mentioned earlier and then some - it’s ok to feel sad or happy or angry or whatever it may be. It allows us to embrace the emotions we feel without fear or apprehension, and when we’re in touch with our emotions we can be more unapologetically ourselves. Music also makes me feel more confident in myself.”
If I think about how music has become a part of my core being, I have to revisit to a sentence I wrote just above: “The Con never fails to make me feel, think, and reflect on all the versions of me that have loved, and still love, this album.” The thing I have always loved about music is that I can come to it as any version of myself, with any feeling bouncing around my brain, and there’s something for me there. Music feels inherently nonjudgmental, because the thing that makes music your origin story isn’t that you’re the same person you were when you discovered it, but that it served at the thing that could grow up with you.
Thank you to Joe and Nicole for letting me tell your origin story.
Image Credit:
Thumbnail Inspiration: Attico 36, Image 1: Daft Punk, Image 2: Bon Iver, Image 3: Tegan and Sara